Outlook outage: how to keep working and the main email alternatives
Published on 13 November 2026 - 9:31 GMT+1 The interruption on Thursday 12 November mainly affected Outlook, but it also hit Teams, Copilot and the other Microsoft 365...
Published on 13 November 2026 - 9:31 GMT+1
The interruption on Thursday 12 November mainly affected Outlook, but it also hit Teams, Copilot and the other Microsoft 365 tools. According to reports collected by the Downdetector website, the incident was particularly widespread in America.
Microsoft explained on X that it had received reports from users who were unable to access their Exchange Online mailboxes through different connection methods in America, Europe, Africa and the rest of the world.
The Redmond-based company later said that part of its infrastructure was under a higher than normal load, something that probably caused the errors, and announced that it would redistribute traffic across its infrastructures. The Teams platform currently appears to be working, although some users were still reporting difficulties.
How to keep working while Outlook does not respond
The first step is to check whether the problem is ongoing. Microsoft publishes updates on its X account, @MSFT365Status (source in Spanish), and maintains a status page at status.cloud.microsoft.
If you are an administrator, Microsoft documentation says that the Microsoft 365 admin centre has a service health section with open and resolved incidents, accessible to anyone with the service support administrator or Helpdesk administrator role.
It is best not to expect too much from switching apps. Since the outage affects access to Exchange Online mailboxes through different connection methods, moving from the desktop app to another one may not help at all. "TechRadar" pointed this out during a previous outage, in July 2025, when the web version, the mobile app and the desktop client all failed at the same time.
If you use the desktop version of Outlook with a Microsoft 365 or Exchange account, there is a useful option. According to Microsoft, Cached Exchange Mode (source in Spanish) lets you work with mailbox items even when the network connection is slow or unavailable. It does not work with POP or IMAP accounts.
In addition, the Send/Receive tab includes the Work Offline button, available in Outlook for Microsoft 365 and in the 2021, 2019 and 2016 versions. It lets you carry on reading and drafting messages using the content that is already stored on your device.
For the rest of your work, the suggestion is to turn to channels that do not depend on Microsoft. Suggested tools include internal messaging services such as Slack or Google Chat to coordinate the team, and uploading large files to WeTransfer or Google Drive so that you can share the link through another channel. Teams also experienced incidents on Thursday, so it is not the safest option for this coordination, although on Friday it is working in most regions.
What alternatives to Outlook are available
If the outage makes you consider other options, it is worth distinguishing between email providers and programmes used to read your mail. Changing programme does not change where the mailbox is hosted. Thunderbird, for example, can connect to a Microsoft 365 account via IMAP, but that account is still hosted on Microsoft servers. To rely on a different provider you need to open an account with them.
Among internet providers, Arsys describes Gmail as a free service with gmail.com accounts, apps for Android and iOS and integration with Drive, Google Calendar and Google Meet. It points out two limits: storage is shared with other Google services, and to use your own domain you need Google Workspace, which is a paid service.
Kinsta lists Proton Mail, an open-source service based in Switzerland that offers end-to-end encryption, web access and apps for Android and iOS. It has a free plan, although custom domains are only available on paid plans.
